reference v1 release checklist

Mod API v1 release checklist

This page tracks release readiness rather than the long-term feature wishlist. Features listed as experimental can ship with v1 without receiving the stable-v1 compatibility promise.

Runtime verification

• Verify spawnOnDeath behavior for spawned variants; save/reload compatibility remains covered by the general save pass below.
• Verify speedPulse with a visually obvious test enemy.
• Exercise explicit walking, climbing, and flying navigation links. Fully original ground enemies now consume directed walking/climb paths; verify upward traversal and natural downward falls on each authored map.
• Confirm beam damage ticks, charge firing, alternate-fire mechanics, and primary melee.
• Regression-test the charge percentage/ready prompt.
• Regression-test alternate-fire arm recoil.
• Play-test original-enemy attackHit/multi-hit timing, facing-relative impulses, positional event audio, camera shake, and atlas sprite effects.
• Play-test physical projectiles, impacts, casings, custom audio, and sprite animation.
• Test every example pack separately.
• Run all currently compatible installed examples together.
• Test stage exit/re-entry, restart-required mod state changes, and save loading.
• Play-test the prepared 256-by-96-tile stress stage with 15 spawners, 65 authored objects, explicit platform-climb and aerial routes, and a 60-enemy opening wave.

Moving platforms, Tiled visuals, Core-art objects, and authored doors have been exercised successfully, but remain part of the wider regression pass.

Schema freeze

• Manifest JSON Schema exists.
• Challenge JSON Schema exists.
• Rule-profile JSON Schema exists.
• Add enemy, clothing, weapon, usable, stage, difficulty, asset-patch, and Tiled-map schemas.
• Mark stable and experimental fields with x-stability.
• Document defaults, bounds, fallbacks, unknown-field behavior, and migration rules.
• Validate every public example against its applicable schema with Tools/ModSchemaValidator.

Compatibility and release engineering

• Explicitly exclude automatic old-content-ID aliases from v1 and document the author migration policy.
• Confirm disabled mods retain their saved data and reconnect when enabled.
• Test missing, removed, upgraded, and renamed mod content against existing saves.
• Run the complete EditMode and PlayMode suites from a clean checkout.
• Produce and smoke-test a clean standalone Windows build.
• Automate catalog schema, immutable release hash/size, ZIP traversal/extension, manifest agreement, corrupt dependency-batch, and extracted content-schema checks.
• Complete hands-on Windows, Android, and WebGL catalog install/update/rollback smoke tests.
• Test excessive runtime object counts in a player build.
• Define and enforce practical file, texture, map, and content-count limits; performance budgets remain part of stress testing.
• Reconcile the draft specification, public guide, examples, and published schemas.
• Verify GitBook navigation and internal links.
• Document installation, packaging, troubleshooting, and Windows desktop support.
• Publish generated field-by-field schema, validation-code, and Core asset-slot references.
• Establish the public API changelog and future migration-guide format.
• Document code-confirmed Android and WebGL behavior without marking release-build verification complete.
• Capture verified installation, Mods panel, Unity authoring, Tiled, and DragonBones screenshots.
• Finalize licensing, redistribution, and documentation-publication policy text.
• Complete per-artifact provenance and permission decisions for the player build, SDK, examples, catalog archives, and previews selected for release.
• Remove generated/local files from the pull request and review the final diff.

Explicitly not required to freeze v1

• Fully loose replacement of every Core prefab and asset.
• Arbitrary C# or Unity components in data-only mods.
• Entirely original enemy skeletons and animation controllers.
• Arbitrary new player clothing rig slots or clothing physics graphs.
• A standalone graphical mod-maker.
• External mod-folder discovery on Android or WebGL.